Bible Commentary - Ezra 10

In this chapter, Ezra and the people agree to divorce their foreign wives.

This is the final chapter in the book of Ezra, and it concludes the story about the Judeans and their foreign wives.  I mentioned in the previous chapter that I found the conclusion of this book rather abrupt.  Every time I read Ezra, I always find myself wondering, “what next?”  What happened after the foreign wives were sent away?  Did the men remarry Judean women?  What happened to Ezra?  Did he stay in the promised land or move back to Babylon?  Granted, nobody ever writes about their own death, so it’s not like Ezra could write a full account of his life, but without following through into Judah’s later history, this book always felt incomplete to me.

Nevertheless, I will analyze what this chapter does tell us and then after this we move on to the book of Nehemiah.

Beginning in verse 1, we can see that the people emphatically support Ezra.  As we read through the chapter we see that Ezra is supported by both the people and the nation’s leaders.  To me, this raises the question of why the leaders of Judah did not address the problem before Ezra arrived.  From last chapter we saw that the leaders clearly knew that Judeans were marrying foreigners (they were the ones who told Ezra).  Here we see that both the people and the leaders acknowledge their foreign marriages are a sin.  This is in contrast to previous periods in Israel’s history when the people sinned deliberately and rebelled against God and against Moses and some of the other leaders.  I think in this book we see the people much more contrite and humble, compared to their earlier rebellious attitude.  In my opinion, I think the Judeans were sincerely broken by their time under Babylonian rule.

However, if they knew it was a sin, and knew it was happening, why didn’t they do anything about it?  It’s nice that the people are willing to stop sinning, but why did they need Ezra to come and prod them into motion?  It seems to suggest that the leadership (without Ezra) was simply not strong and decisive enough to take action against sin.  That said, it seems like they have all the necessary leadership structures in place to enforce Ezra’s order when he commands the people to gather in Jerusalem and separate from their foreign wives.

In the previous chapter I also discussed why intermarrying with foreigners would be considered a sin by Ezra.  In verse 3 we see that Ezra’s response is to “fix the glitch”; along with the support of the community leaders, Ezra demands that every Judean separate from his foreign wife.  It’s an interesting story if you think about it in terms of biblical morality.  A priest moves to Jerusalem, and then tells hundreds of people that they should get divorces.  I think it would be fascinating to hear someone preach about this at a church, since it runs contrary to the morality narrative that you normally hear about the sanctity of marriage.  Without going into all the details, I will just say that Judah in the restoration era is a substantially different historical context than Judah in the New Testamental period.  I think the best way to understand this chapter is the way that Ezra presents it: a call for the people to separate themselves from the idolatry and sin that surrounds them on every side.

This is one of the big differences between Judaism and Christianity: Judaism is generally a call to separate oneself from a sinful world, while Christianity is generally a call to go into a sinful world and transform it.  Judaism generally strives to create a utopian society separate from the rest of the world and invite people into it (under strict conditions).  Christianity still aims to create a utopia, but it does so by going out into the world and being like salt mixed in with a bowl of dough.  From this context, Ezra is asking the people to separate themselves from the idolatrous foreigners so that they could be wholly dedicated to God.

The rest of the chapter just flows through the logistics of fulfilling Ezra’s command which I don’t find particularly interesting.  There are a few minor notes I would like to include.

First, in verse 4, the people tell Ezra to “be courageous and act”.  I’m not sure if it’s intentional, but this reminds me of God’s command to Joshua in Joshua 1:9 when the LORD tells Joshua to “be strong and courageous”.

Second, I find it a surprisingly human touch when Ezra mentions the heavy rain in verse 9.  As far as I can remember, this is the first (and possibly only) reference to weather as an element of a biblical story.  The bible references weather frequently as a reward or judgement from God (e.g. you have sinned therefore you will have a long drought), but as a neutral component of everyday life I can’t think of any other place the bible discusses weather.  For instance, search the bible for words like “cloudy” or “sunny” or anything like that.  It might depend on your translation but at least for the NASB I can’t find anything.

And with that, we conclude the book of Ezra.  Next, we will read the book of Nehemiah.  See you there!